When verses palled, and even the woodland path, By innocent contrast, fed my heart with wrath, And I must twist my little gift of words Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords Unmusical, that whistle as they swing To leave on shameless backs their purple sting. How slow Time comes! Gone, who so swift as he? Add but a year, ’tis half a century Since the slave’s stifled moaning broke my sleep, Heard ’gainst my will in that seclusion deep, Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my snare. After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And the cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all our sky With its stored vengeance, and such thunders stirred As heaven’s and earth’s remotest chambers heard, I looked to see an ampler atmosphere By that electric passion-gust blown clear. I looked for this; consider what I see-- But I forbear, ’twould please nor you nor me To check the items in the bitter list Of all I counted on and all I mist. Only three instances I choose from all, And each enough to stir a pigeon’s gall: Office a fund for ballot-brokers made To pay the drudges of their gainful trade; Our cities taught what conquered cities feel By ædiles chosen that they might safely steal; And gold, however got, a title fair To such respect as only gold can bear. I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay What all our journals tell me every day? Poured our young martyrs their high-hearted blood That we might trample to congenial mud The soil with such a legacy sublimed? Methinks an angry scorn is here well-timed: Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay? Where’er I turn some scandal fouls the way. Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, ’Twere surely you whose humor’s honied ease Flows necked with gold of thought, whose generous mind Sees Paradise regained by all mankind, Whose brave example still to vanward shines, Checks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze? I loved my Country so as only they Who love a mother fit to die for may; I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,-- What better proof than that I loathed her shame? That many blamed me could not irk me long, But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? ’Tis not for me to answer: this I know, That man or race so prosperously low Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel, Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune’s heel; For never land long lease of empire won Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done. POSTSCRIPT, 1887.